Archive for the ‘Design’ category

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Typedia: A Shared Encyclopedia of Typefaces

October 20th, 2009

Sample font detail page

Typedia: A Shared Encyclopedia of Typefaces is “a resource to classify, categorize, and connect typefaces” providing a wealth of information, links, visuals, and sources for many typefaces. Navigate the fonts by type (humanist, poster, sans, etc) or search by name or creator. Each font page links to:

  • Designer(s)
  • Foundry(ies)
  • Release Year
  • Country of Origin
  • Classification
  • Original Format
  • Distributor(s)
  • Tags

It also provides a background/history for each font, as well as linking to examples “in the wild.” Very well designed, orderly, clean, and useful.

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Posted in Arts, Design, Graphic Design

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The Online Photographer: The Worst Photograph Ever Made

September 7th, 2009

From 12/12/08, Mike Johnston, in his blog The Online Photographer, calls this Annie Leibovitz photograph “the worst photograph ever made“:

From pdnedu.blogs.com (http://pdnedu.blogs.com/.a/6a00d8341ce76f53ef010536887d0d970c-pi)

[picture taken from pdnedu.blogs.com (http://pdnedu.blogs.com/.a/6a00d8341ce76f53ef010536887d0d970c-pi)]

According to Mr. Johnston, “[the effort put into this photograph] was all done intentionally, front to back, top to bottom, money-no-object, by an army of the most talented professionals, from art director to stylists to make-up artists to baby-wranglers to lighting assistants to photographer to digital retoucher, all working assiduously in concert in pursuit of the utterly pointless.” Ouch!

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Posted in Design, Photography

Data Scienist > Data Geek > Designer « Visualizing Economics

July 26th, 2009
Catherine Mulbrandons Data Scientest steps (per Ben Fry; from http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2009/07/12/data-scienist-data-geek-designer/)

Catherine Mulbrandon's Data Scientest capabilities (per steps by Ben Fry; from http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2009/07/12/data-scienist-data-geek-designer/)

Catherine Mulbrandon took Ben Fry’s 7 steps of data the  Data Scientest steps (from his PhD dissertation (page 30 etc), dated 1997 and reiterated in his Visualizing Data book, as he describes on his website) and graphed her own ability levels in each area.

Clever use of the original ideas, along with some additional “Testing” inserts of her own. In fact, as a programmer, I would argue for testing between each of these 7 steps. I wouldn’t dare use data (from step 1) without validating it, nor move to step 3 without ensuring that step 2 hadn’t trashed the data. Indeed, each step assumes a solid foundation from the earlier steps, though, as Mr. Fry mentions, the steps are largely iterative, not linear. True, thankfully.

[Thanks to DataVisualization.ch for the link.]

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Posted in Data Visualization, Design, Programming, Software, Tools

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Running the Numbers II by Chris Jordan

June 7th, 2009


Shark Teeth, 2009 by Chris Jordan.

Chris Jordan reveals a new perspective of scale in his Running the Numbers II art online. Subtitled Portraits of global mass culture, the pieces depict the scale of our world around us — and how we mistreat it. Take a look, making sure to look at the zoom/detailed samples.

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Posted in Arts, Design

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User Interface Patterns

May 26th, 2009

ui-patterns.com

Since first reading the Gang-of-four’s book, I have thought patterns were a great idea. Now that I’m getting into design and data visualization more, I’m intrigued by the possibility of merging interface design with software patterns. Makes sense, don’t you think?

So, when I found UI-patterns.com, I thought “yes! here’s the merging of the two disciplines/approaches. Great. Now if I can just merge these patterns with Tufte-based principles and OVID-based development, I should be able to come up with a potent app in any environment.

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Posted in Data Visualization, Design, Graphic Design, Programming, Software, Tools, Website

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